Review: The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I had no expectations of this book, didn't really know what it was about and the only reasons I read were simply that 1) my sister had it and 2) it seemed like a series of books that you had to love if you're a part of the Nerdfighter community. So naturally I felt that I'd give it a go.

From the start I was drawn into the story. Although Collins's first person present style is a little clunky in places, I found it to also be a very dynamic and immersive style of storytelling. From the start I wanted to know about these people, and before long it felt like I did know them. The main characters are established well and I feel myself liking whom I should like, disliking whom I should dislike and feeling indifferent to whom it was deserved. It did what it said it should.
As the Games got underway, I was drawn into them and could not bear to put the book down, not wishing to leave the characters hanging. Unwilling to leave them to the horrors of the Games I had to carry on as long as I could.

Looking back, I was absorbed and in this area the book did very well. I could hardly put it down. In the name of impartiality, I did find her writing style very awkward at times. I was occasionally distracted by the way her sentences seemed to tangle themselves up a bit, however that was partly her composition and partly her choice to use the first person present tense...

I immensely enjoyed and subsequently moved straight on to Catching Fire.



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The Labyrinth

Last night I finished reading Looking for Alaska.
I totally loved it; it was hilarious and heart-breaking and thought provoking... A review will probably appear after I give it a shot on GoodReads and link it back here, but one question was raised in the book that has got me thinking. So, I'm about to get all philosophical on y'all.

"How will I ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?"

This all depends on your perspective, first off. The way we see life is not a compulsory point of view, but a choice; i.e. whether you focus on the good or the bad is up to you as an individual. Suffering is not the be all and end all of life. As a Christian, I personally believe that difficulties and things that could be described as suffering is not negative. It often turns out to have been a good thing and something positive, although no one thinks that way when it's happening.
But there is something I want to comment on regarding the nature of labyrinths. Mazes and labyrinths are not the same thing and I will explain this. Mazes have a complex system of paths and branching paths, false or otherwise. A labyrinth however has only one path that winds and twists around on itself. A maze must be figured out; you can go down false paths which lead to dead ends or take you back on yourself. You can get lost, search for a long time and still not have an idea where you're going or if you'll ever find your way out. The solution to a labyrinth is to simply keep walking. Keep following that path that winds on and on until eventually you reach the exit.

And so, simply, there you have it. How will you ever get out of the labyrinth of suffering? By putting one foot in front of the other, so to speak. You just keep going, pushing past the obstacles and ignoring distraction because one day, eventually, when you're not expecting to, you'll run straight out of the exit.
And that's the simple truth of it.

Cacher

I have recently come to a stark and serious realisation and that is that a) I have gained weight and b) I need to lose some of said weight. I've noticed that the positive habit I formed of refraining from eating too much sweet stuff and eating between meals had slipped recently and through this my girth has swelled somewhat. I've decided that this will not do; I do not want to be an overweight blob of grease again. The excess eating and stuff is being cracked down on, that's not so hard to do; making sure I think twice before having that twix. Deciding to have a drink before I eat, because that (surprisingly) does help to curb hunger. Stuff like that is reasonably easy to do. But there is a whole other arena that needs to be tackled; physical movement. Now, as are most internet people, I am reluctant to... well, move. We like the intertubes; we like to sit on our butts, watch youtube videos and blog. (And when I say blog, I mean reblog photos and junk on tumblr.)
I needed to actually move because cutting out junk food and all that jazz isn't enough. So, I have turned to the magical world of geocaching and I love it! I've become a total addict. I want to constantly find caches and place caches. It's a great thing to do for me because it's active; not only physically but mentally. Most of the time you're given the coordinates and a cryptic clue including some specifics, which means you have to work out the clue and then, when you get there, work out where the cache might be. Because it's not as simple as looking on the ground for a box or something. They're hidden, and a lot of the time they're hidden REALLY well. I spent 20 odd minutes searching for my first cache. It took me a while, but it was worth it because the excitement you feel after finally finding this little thing is crazy; there's this huge sense of accomplishment. Like you've actually found treasure, but in reality it's just trinkets. Poker chips and guitar picks and tiny animals and the occasional trackable (they're fun: you log them online and you can see where it's been). I need mental stimulation otherwise I just... stagnate so caching is perfect for me.
Now, you don't always have a successful time, as was evidenced today. My phone decided to scramble the gps signal and lead me in the complete opposite to the direction the cache was in. I ended up 1.6km away. But this turned out for the best because it lead to me spotting some nice places to drop caches. Here's where physical exercise comes in; I went out on my bike (which I never do) and after my failure to find even the right area I thought that it was pointless to just go straight home. So I went for a tour of the back roads of Costessey, just buzzing about here there and whatever road I felt like going down. I saw places I knew and places I didn't, but it all added up to one thing; I enjoyed being active and that's the main thing. I got back home and I felt tired, but good tired; satisfied that I'd managed to go out for a bike ride and managed to do more than a full pelt circuit of the block.

I know that this is only a small victory on the way to getting my weight down to where I was, but I feel proud of myself. I feel like I've accomplished something. I am man! Raaaar!

Review: Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood

Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood by Oliver Bowden

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I'm always slightly dubious whenever I start a video game book adaptation. they're rarely anything special and they're often very forgettable reads. So I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed reading Brotherhood.



From the beginning, Bowden's style felt a little flat and a little unimaginative, add to that his sometimes clumsy structure. There were the occasional random changes in POV which just seemed awkward.

As I read through the first few chapters I felt like I was simply reading through a log of someone playing the game. "I did this challenge/ quest, then there's a cut scene *insert subtitled dialogue copied off screen*, then I did this next quest..." you get the picture. That threw me a little and I was a bit let down. However, after a few chapters it felt like Bowden had found his stride and warmed to the idea. It became less of a log of the experience and more of a novelization of the game although the clumsiness didn't disappear. As I read on I found myself becoming engaged in the story, despite knowing essentially what happened already - I haven't played the game, although I have watched a play-through of it. The story of Ezio Auditore's fight to eradicate the evil Borgia family's influence over Italy moved along in an exciting and interesting way, adding a little flesh to the bones of the Brotherhood game. You get to see a little added material through this book - some of the bits and pieces that link the individual "memories" of the game. An enjoyable experience for the majority of the book.

But, as I got closer to the end of the book it started to feel like Bowden was rushing, almost like he'd totally lost interest in the project. As I reached the last part of the book (it's divided into three parts) I was finding pointlessly short chapters; for example, chapter 59 is one paragraph long and a paragraph that could have easily been added to the previous chapter. This almost lazy and pointless extending of the chapter number did annoy me a little as it just seemed unnecessary.

But I can say that these things didn't hamper my enjoyment of the story and the book as a whole.



I was pleasantly surprised by Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood. It's not amazingly written, but it's rather enjoyable. It's very much a nerdy gamer's book so if you've never played the games or don't really have that much of an interest in them then I would stay away from this one, if I were you...



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